The present invention relates generally to task distribution and more particularly to automatic task distribution to agents.
With the increase in use of the Internet, there has also been an increase in the availability of support for products or services and the opportunity to conduct business over the Internet. Typically, these services are provided by e-mail, chat sessions, voice over IP (Internet Protocol) or other electronic means of communication. Furthermore, these services are often provided by the same individuals that provide conventional telephone services. Thus, the same individual may be responsible for answering e-mail questions and for answering questions over the telephone.
In a conventional telephone system, users will often log onto a telephone switch device with automatic call distribution (ACD). Such a telephone switch device would be provided with characteristics of the user logged on and then match those characteristics with characteristics of incoming calls so that a user with the correct qualifications or expertise answers the incoming call. For example, a caller may be provided with several options from a voice menu and when the option is selected the call is routed to a user associated with the selected option.
Despite the fact that the individual answering telephone calls and e-mail or other electronic messages may be the same individual, currently, there are limited mechanisms for coordinating these tasks such that when an individual is answering an e-mail they do not receive telephone calls or other similar situations. Currently, to avoid these situations, users may need to take manual actions to log off the telephone switch or make themselves unavailable, in order to not receive telephone calls.
In light of the above discussion a need exists for improvement in the assignment of tasks across various message media.
In view of the above discussion, it is an object of the present invention to provide automatic task distribution including distribution of telephone and computer related tasks.
It is another object of the present invention to facilitate the coordination of telephone and computer related tasks.
It is another object of the present invention to use existing telephone equipment in the coordination of telephone and computer related tasks.
These and other objects of the present invention are provided by methods, systems and computer program products which automatically distribute tasks associated with a telephone system and tasks associated with a computer system between a plurality of agents tracking ACD and telephone status of the plurality of agents and tracking computer status of the plurality of agents. When a request for a computer task is received, an agent of the plurality of agents is assigned to the computer task based on the ACD status, telephone status and the computer status of the agent of the plurality of agents.
In a further embodiment, when a request for a telephone task is received an agent of the plurality of agents is assigned based on the ACD status, telephone status and the computer status of the agent of the plurality of agents. Such a telephone task may be an incoming telephone call.
By tracking the ACD status, telephone status and the computer status of an agent, telephone tasks and computer tasks may be coordinated such that agents occupied by telephone tasks will not be assigned computer tasks and agents occupied by computer tasks will not be assigned telephone tasks. Thus, the present invention allows for automatic distribution of both computer and telephone tasks. Furthermore, this distribution is coordinated to reduce the likelihood of interference between the two types of tasks.
In a further embodiment of the present invention, the ACD status, telephone status and the computer status of the assigned agent are updated to indicate that the agent is unavailable. Furthermore, the ACD status and telephone status may be tracked by maintaining a list of the status of agents of the plurality of agents which are logged onto a telephone switch with automatic call distribution (ACD), wherein the list of status of agents corresponds to the status of the agent with respect to the telephone switch. Information about the call queue associated with the telephone switch may also be maintained. Tracking computer status may be accomplished by maintaining a list of the status of agents of the plurality of agents which are logged onto a virtual ACD, wherein the list of status of agents corresponds to whether the agent is currently assigned at least one of a computer task and a telephone task. Also, a copy of a computer task request queue associated with the virtual ACD may be maintained.
A virtual ACD system, as referenced above, preferably includes one or more request queues. The agents may log on to one or more of these queues which corresponds to the capabilities or skill they possess.
By utilizing tracking, the status of a switch with ACD capabilities (a conventional ACD) switch may be utilized. Thus, the present invention may be utilized with existing ACD telephone systems which allow for communication and tracking of the switch status.
In still another embodiment of the present invention, each agent has associated with it agent characteristics. In such a case, a computer task request is received which has associated with it characteristics which are to be associated with an agent to be assigned to the requested computer task. A list of available agents from the plurality of agents is generated and an agent is selected from the list of available agents having agent characteristics that correspond to the characteristics associated with the received request. The received computer task request is then assigned to the selected agent.
The status of the agent may be updated by requesting that a telephone switch having an ACD make the selected agent unavailable. The list of the status corresponding to the status of the agents logged into the telephone switch is then updated when the telephone switch indicates that the agent is unavailable. The list of the status of agents of the plurality of agents which are logged onto a virtual ACD is also updated to indicate that the selected agent is unavailable.
The list of available agents may be generated by determining if an agent is available to accept a virtual ACD task and determining if the agent is either logged off the telephone switch or available to take a call from the telephone switch. If such is the case, the agent may be added to the list of available agents.
Also, if agents are not available which correspond to the characteristics associated with the task request, computer task requests may be stored in a computer task request queue.
In a particular system embodiment of the present invention, a system for automatically distributing both telephone tasks and computer tasks to agents has an agent application and a telephone switch having an automatic call distribution (ACD) feature for distributing telephone tasks to the agent application. A virtual ACD communicates with the telephone switch, tracks telephone task availability status of the agent application, tracks the computer task availability of the agent application and distributes computer tasks to the agent application based on the telephone task availability of the agent application and the computer task availability of the agent application.
In a particular system embodiment, a computer telephone interface which provides communication between the telephone switch and the virtual ACD. Furthermore, the system may incorporate storage means for storing enterprise specified rules accessible to the virtual ACD. In such a case, the virtual ACD further distributes computer tasks to the agent application based on the enterprise specific rules stored in the storage means.
The system may also include a virtual ACD request queue operably associated with the virtual ACD for storing computer task requests until an application agent is available to handle the requests.